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Thursday, September 26, 2013

Here's another excerpt from my new book, The Young Athlete's Guide to Playing Sports. This short topic is from chapter 2, Learning How to Play, and discusses the importance of keeping your fundamental skills intact as you advance.

Don't Forget the Fundamentals

As you get older and your skills improve, your game will become more complete. You will become bigger, faster, and stronger. You’ll perform at a higher level and execute more complex skills. But as your game expands, it’s important that you don’t lose sight of your fundamental skills.

In your haste to add more skills, don’t lose the ones you already have! Regularly return to and practice the essential, basic skills of your sport to keep the foundation of your game strong.

During each practice (at the beginning or end) spend several minutes executing your essential shots or other skills, concentrating on your form. Do this in a way that you are not challenged by the physical characteristics of the skill such as speed, quickness or strength. Execute the skill with a comfortable, even tempo. Move closer to the goal if you’re shooting or throwing a ball. As you flow through each element of the skill, feel whether your movements match your mental picture of the respective element that belongs to the perfect shot or other skill. Repeat this multiple times until you have executed the skill with perfect form—then move back to your normal distance (if you’re shooting or throwing) and bring up the skill’s execution speed to its typical level.

For example, in basketball, take a few minutes practicing your shooting motion three to five feet in front of the basketball hoop.

Focus on a perfect grip and arm setup (form an “L” and pretend you’re carrying a pizza above your head). Place your non-shooting hand to your side or behind your back. Use your legs to push the “L” upward into a smooth release that generates backspin and a high arc. Follow-through with your hand extended over and into the basket.

In tennis, you might start your practice by hitting easy groundstrokes with your partner from the service line, concentrating on good form (emphasizing a fluid motion with topspin). Every sport has its essential skills that you can practice in this manner.

Whenever you feel your form deteriorating while practicing a normal shot or skill, stop and perform the actions described above. Your goal in practice is to develop repeatable skill movements, ones that incorporate the form that will most consistently give you the best result. Do not reinforce bad form by poor practice habits! With few exceptions, you’re as good as your practice.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Over the next few months, I will post excerpts from my new book, The Young Athlete's Guide to Playing Sports. The first topic is from chapter 1, Let's Play Ball!, and discusses how to use your peripheral vision to more fully see all of the action around you.

Use Your Peripheral Vision

To track both the action around the ball and player movements away from the ball, you sometimes need to quickly turn your head back and forth. This is especially true when the ball and players of interest are not all in front of you.

But when all of the action is within your field of view, a more effective technique is to use your peripheral vision. This is the part of vision that occurs outside the very center of your gaze, and extends to the edges of your field of view.

When using your peripheral vision, you never lose sight of a potentially key event (unlike turning your head back and forth). You can track all of the action all of the time. By seeing both the action around the ball and your opponent, you can anticipate and react quicker to play better defense. Similarly, on offense, you can recognize passing and scoring opportunities without having to look directly at your teammates. You can see a teammate off to your side cutting toward the goal, even as you attack your defender.

How do you use your peripheral vision?
Instead of focusing your line of sight directly on one player (or the ball), look in a direction that is half-way between two players. Although you will not see either player clearly, you can still recognize their movements. And this is the key information you need to react. Depending on the relative importance of each player (and how close they are to the edges of your field of view), you can also shift your line of sight slightly one way or the other.

To become more aware of your peripheral vision, try this simple exercise. Extend both of your arms fully outward to your sides at eye level and wiggle your fingers. While focusing on an object in front of you, slowly move your arms forward until you begin to see your fingers. Notice that you only see the movement of your fingers—everything else has no clear shape! You can move your hands forward and backward to explore the edges of your field of view and increase your awareness of this type of vision.

Although the above diagram illustrates how the defender uses his peripheral vision, consider how the same approach is used by the attacking player with the ball. As he moves forward, he is primarily looking at the defender while also using his peripheral vision to track both the ball and the position of his teammate on the opposite side.

Finally, using your peripheral vision not only helps improve your play, but also prevents injury. Keeping your head up, “on a swivel” (moving your head back and forth), and actively using your peripheral vision, all help you anticipate events before they happen. By recognizing approaching players and objects early, you can react more quickly to avoid dangerous collisions.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

After a lot of hard work, my new book is finally published! To learn more, click on the the menubar tab at the top of this page for a full description of the book's contents. The book is available from Amazonas either a paperback or Kindle E-book.

To summarize, this book is an all-around guide for young athletes and their parents on how to play sports, win, and have fun. It covers the essential principles of successful play, ones common to most team sports and many individual ones. It provides tips and techniques that will help any young athlete, talented or not, improve his or her play. And most importantly, it presents an approach to playing sports that can help ensure a life-long interest in playing.

Endorsements (Thanks!)

I was pleased to receive some nice endorsements from several individuals, including Mark Murphy, the President and CEO of the Green Bay Packers and Dave Littlefield, the former GM for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Both of these men have a strong interest in youth sports, and ensuring that every child has a positive experience. Having played and worked with athletes at the highest competitive levels, they both have informed perspectives on playing sports. In addition to his Green Bay Packers responsibilities, Mark works with the Positive Coaching Alliance and is on their advisory board.

Also, thanks to David Stevenson, the President and CEO of the Central Connecticut YMCA and former director of my local YMCA. In both of these roles, Dave has been a steady advocate for a balanced approach to playing sports that benefits every child.

And finally, thanks to Mike Mastroianni for his support. As a high school athletic director and highly successful boys basketball coach, Mike has a keen understanding of successful play in multiple sports.